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After six years of hosting Heartstrings, Baltimore’s romance hotline, I’ve discovered people don’t want to be told how to fix their lives or be held accountable. They just want to hear themselves talk and validate their own narcissism.
“I don’t know,” I murmur. “I’ve been—” Struggling, I think, afraid to say the word out loud. Afraid to make it real. I’ve been struggling and I have no idea how to fix it.
It feels like every time I get my hopes up for something good, reality comes out swinging. I don’t know how to be a hopeful person anymore. It’s easier not to be.
Aiden Valentine: Flowers die. Everything dies. Caller: I thought this was a romance hotline.
“So I stopped trying to date. I have so much love in my life, I’m not sure I need any more. I don’t want—I don’t want to settle for something just to say I have it. That’s what I’ve been telling myself anyway, and here we are.”
Why can’t this be the one thing I don’t have to try at? Why can’t it be a thing that just…happens? I don’t want—I don’t want to think about what I should say or how I should act or…or have talking points in the notes app of my phone for a dinner date at a restaurant that I don’t really like. I want to feel something when I connect with someone. I want sparks. The good kind, you know? I want to laugh and mean it. I want goose bumps. I want to wonder what my date is thinking about and hope it might be me. I want…I want the magic.”
She scoffs. “You host a show about romance and you’re telling me you’re not a romantic?” “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. I think I used to be, but that part of me feels fractured. Wobbly. Broken down by a thousand and one callers who have fallen out of love. Who never had it in the first place. Love and romance seem like a fairy tale now, something we tell kids to help them sleep better at night. Something we tell ourselves too.
“When the whole world tells you you’re silly for wanting the things you want, you start to believe them. You start to think you’re not worth it. That if the things you’re waiting for do exist, they’re not for someone like you.” She sighs, a small, hopeless sound that twists through my headphones. “But what’s wrong with being a romantic? I can be a confident, independent woman and still want someone to hold my hand. To ask about my day. It’s a good thing to want passion and excitement and care. Attention and affection. I don’t want to settle for anything less than that. And I think I’ve just
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“I want goose bumps. I want to be wanted. All this time and I—I haven’t given up. I guess I’m just waiting for it to find me.”
“How can I be lonely when I’ve got you?” I shake her arm. “And your dad and Mateo. Everyone at the shop. Patty across the street and our not-so-secret wine. I’m not lonely, honey. There’s way too many people in our lives for me to be lonely.” Maya squeezes my hand back. “You don’t have to be alone to be lonely.”
I’ve got all sorts of love in my life, but I’m still yearning for something more. I’ve done a really good job of convincing myself I haven’t been, but Aiden Valentine and Heartstrings ripped that little delusion away.
I wish there was a guidebook for this. An instruction manual that could tell me how to take myself apart and put everything back together so I’m good as new. I wish I knew how to make sense of my pieces.
“Magic? You told me dating gives you indigestion.”
But the rest of it—the real reason I don’t date, the anxiety that there might not be someone out there for me to fit into the life I’ve made for myself, that maybe I want too much, that I’m being too whimsical and naive, that it’s too late for me—I haven’t wanted to talk about that with anyone.
An impossibility when Maggie bellows down the hallway about soulmates and true love every ten to fifteen seconds. She started emailing me quotes from Pride and Prejudice. I had to set up a spam blocker.
Sometimes a little discomfort is a good thing. A necessary thing. A thing that leads to better things.
“I don’t want you to do anything.” Maggie studies me, eyes assessing. “I want you to be exactly who you are.” I want to ask her, And who do you think that is? And then, Do you mind letting me know? Because I’ve got no clue. I’m so used to everyone else defining me, I need the help. Maya’s mom. Lu from the service garage. Damian and Celeste’s wayward daughter. The one who got pregnant so young. She had so much promise, didn’t she? Whatever happened to her?
I don’t want my pick of the litter. The litter sounds terrifying, frankly. I haven’t been on an actual, real-life date in two years, and I don’t know how to say that without sounding pathetic. And a part of me, a teeny-tiny sliver of myself, is still waiting. To bump into someone on the street or pick up the wrong coffee order. For the right person at the right time in exactly the right place. To not have to try so damn hard at any of it. It’s the romantic in me that Aiden laughed at. And maybe it’s childish or naive or whatever, but it’s me. I’m allowed to want soft, special things.
“It tells me you know exactly who you are, and you know exactly what you want. You’ve just buried it under everything else for so long you’ve forgotten.”
She goes quiet on her side of the table. She’s quiet for so long I almost nudge her for an answer again. But something keeps me still. Maybe it’s the look on her face or maybe it’s the way she’s holding her body a little too tight. Like she’s never let herself think of these things before. Like she’s never let herself want them.
“I like thinking that I’d be worth the trouble of something like that,” she confesses quietly. Her shoulder shrugs up to her ear. “I like thinking that it doesn’t need to be fancy to be special. Maybe…maybe they’d remember I like fountain soda best or daisies instead of roses. Little things that’d let me know they’ve been paying attention.” Her eyes lift back to mine. That twist in my chest again, sharper this time. “I like that. Thinking that I’m worth paying attention to. Something ordinary made extraordinary by the person you’re sharing it with.” She looks back down at her half-empty coffee
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I’m actually pretty partial to “love guru.”
I certainly didn’t expect things to take the turn they did. But I guess that’s my love life in a nutshell. Underwhelmed and dissatisfied. Print it on my tombstone.
I can’t believe I ever thought dating apps were the wrong fit for me. I think dating is the wrong fit for me.
I don’t like being sad. I’ve never liked being sad. I’ve always done my best to see the glass as half-full. Find the silver lining. Even in my worst moments, it’s something I’ve been able to do.
I think I’ve put too much of myself into this, shared too many of the things I usually keep hidden. I got my hopes up.
“Nah, Lucie.” In my dream, he brushes a kiss against my forehead. “I think you’re the magic.”
Listen up, lizards. There’s a new daddy in town.
“Ah, Lucie.” Aiden smiles, his fingers fanning out wide against my back. “I’d know you anywhere.”
“I started to see this common thread with callers. How love could make them miserable. How it could tear them to absolute pieces. And once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I think I started waiting for it. Bracing myself for it. It felt easier that way.”
I know I’m an affectionate drunk. Grayson calls me a cuddle monster. I think it’s my body trying to make up for the lack of touch I secretly crave.
That half smile again. “I like a woman who can toss me around.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior from here on out.”
I don’t think I want him on his best behavior.
“I’m leaving now.” “I’ve heard rumors about that,” I say lightly, crossing my arms over my chest. He cracks a smile.
“Thanks for breakfast,” he says while he’s pulling on his boots. “No problem.” “I’ll—I’ll see you Monday,” he says again. “Get out of my house,” I reply with a laugh while he grabs his coat. He rolls his eyes at me before he disappears out the front door, and as it snicks shut behind him, I collapse in my chair. I press two fingers to the edge of my smile, my cheeks straining under the pressure of it. The forgotten Heartstrings phone sitting in the middle of the table buzzes with a text. Aiden: Bye. I laugh out loud.
“You might not be what I’m looking for, but you’re what I want. And that’s enough for me. Trust me to decide for myself.”
Aiden is right. That can’t happen again, no matter how good it was. This infatuation I have with Aiden needs to end. He’s made it very clear he can’t give me what I want, and I’m not in the habit of pushing people. I’m going to believe what he says. I’m not going to beg him to be something he’s not. I won’t beg him to want me.
“What she needs is to see her mom prioritizing her own happiness for once. So she can learn to do the same.”
“Because you said it was your favorite,” I admit. “And I want your favorite to be my favorite.”
I talk to people for a living, but I can’t manage to string a sentence together when I’m alone with Lucie.
It’s a romantic thought. The two of us drifting past each other without ever realizing it.
The most precious, delicate things wedge themselves between the plans you’ve made for yourself.
I thought we were on the same page, but apparently we aren’t even in the same library.
The urge to curl both of my hands in the front of his shirt and shake him until he understands is all-consuming.
“You are what I want, Aiden. But for some inconceivable reason, you don’t seem to believe me when I say it.”
“I’m not good for you.” He says it like a fact, like it’s something he’s known all along. That we were never, ever going to work and I’m the silly girl who believed differently.
I’ve been here before. I know this feeling. The sinking realization that my feelings don’t match up. That I’ve felt too much too fast and made assumptions. Misread the situation and projected my own hopes on another person.
“It’s easier like this, isn’t it?” His eyes flash. “I wouldn’t call this easy.” “But it is. For you, it is. Better end it now before you get in too deep and risk hurting, right? You’re so used to distancing yourself from any sort of feeling that you don’t even realize you’re doing it anymore.
He’s still afraid—even with me—and that hurts almost as much as everything else. That despite everything, he isn’t willing to try.
